Tis the season when many Americans welcome trees into their homes. For millions of us, fresh-cut evergreens are at the heart of Christmas celebrations – a symbol of hope and joy. Sadly, the situation facing America’s trees is neither hopeful nor joyous.

The scourge of forest pests is expected to put almost two thirds of America’s forests at risk by 2027, costing several billion dollars every year for dead tree removal and jeopardizing longstanding U.S. industries that rely on timber.

In a towering forest of centuries-old eastern hemlocks, it's easy to miss one of the tree's nemeses. No larger than a speck of pepper, the Hemlock woolly adelgid spends its life on the underside of needles sucking sap, eventually killing the tree.

The Cary Institute has received $158,549 from the NYS Department of Environmental Conservation's Hudson River Estuary Grant Program. Funding will support the Hudson Data Jam, an annual competition that melds science, data, and creative expression – with the goal of increasing environmental awareness among students and the community.

Preserving the environment is often seen as a battle of development versus nature. But in America today, roughly three-fourths of us live in metropolitan areas. To preserve our health and the planet's health, we need to create something new: A sustainable city.

The White Mountains of New Hampshire contain an unusual patch of woods known as the Hubbard Brook Experimental Forest. Hubbard Brook has been home to some of the past half-century’s biggest discoveries in forest science, particularly around acid rain and clear-cutting.

When we think of nature in cities, we often think about major green expanses, places like Central Park in New York City or Griffith Park in Los Angeles. But in these cities and others, little patches of greenery — sometimes forgotten, often overlooked — can be very important for the local environment.

Friends turned out for the Ned Ames Honorary Reception and Lecture on June 24. This year’s speaker, President Emeritus Dr. Gene E. Likens, spoke about lessons learned from 50 years of research at the Hubbard Brook Experimental Forest.

The Cary Institute has embarked on an ambitious study that will test environmental interventions with the potential to reduce tick-borne disease in neighborhoods. The goal: to lower Lyme disease rates and protect public health.

A former president of the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies in Dutchess County is one of 375 members of the National Academy of Sciences who has signed an open letter to draw attention to the perils of climate change.

Whoever named the "temperate zone" must have had a sense of humor. I'm writing this during a week of humid, 90-degree days, and just a few months ago it was 13 below, a stiff north wind providing the icing on that frozen cake. Since then, we've had rain, snow, sleet, warm spells, cold snaps and thunderstorms.